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Foreword

This study describes the background and implementation of President Lyndon
Johnson's decision in May 1967 to create a civil/military organization, Civil
Operations and Revolutionary Development; Support--CORDS, to manage US advice
and support to the South Vietnamese government's pacification program. It focuses
on the years 1966­68 when the organization was conceived and established,
and it relates events both from the perspective of government leadership in
Washington and the US mission in Saigon. Over these years, the organization
changed three times, culminating in CORDS. Each change is examined with special
emphasis on the role of important officials, such as General Westmoreland, Ambassador
Komer, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and President Johnson.

The author served in CORDS from December 1967 to June 1968, while in the US
Army, and worked as a historian with the Center of Military History from 1969
to 1972. His extensive first-hand knowledge of the program and personal acquaintance
with key figures concerned make this a study of exceptional value.

Two volumes, now being prepared for the Center of Military History's series,
THE US ARMY IN VIETNAM, will deal comprehensively with all aspects of the US
Army's role in pacification. In the interim, this work should prove useful to
those interested in the history of the Vietnam war and its administrative problems.

Washington, DC

JAMES L. COLLINS, JR.

December 18, 1981

Brigadier General, USA

Chief of Military History

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Author

Dr. Thomas Scoville studied history at the University of Virginia and received
an M.A. in war studies from the University of London. During 1967 and 1968 he
served in Vietnam with a US Army military history detachment and with the headquarters
of CORDS. After working with the Center of Military History from 1969 to 1972,
Dr. Scoville went to MIT, where he received a Ph.D. in political science. From
1977 to 1981 he was special assistant to the director of the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency and then executive director of the President's General Advisory
Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He is now director of policy and
planning with the joint Maritime Congress.

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Preface

As Communist insurgency swept the Republic of Vietnam, one of the South Vietnamese
government's key responses was a "pacification" program. Along with
the military effort to suppress the insurgency, the United States provided advice
and support for the pacification effort, but for over ten years that assistance
was provided by a number of agencies without central coordination. To remedy
this situation, President Lyndon B. Johnson on 9 May 1967 directed formation
of an organization, to be composed of both civilian and military members, to
provide American advice and support to the South Vietnamese pacification program.
The organization's title, Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support-CORDS--combined
the names of two separate staffs then providing support for pacification : a
civilian Office of Civil Operations and a military Revolutionary Development
Support Directorate. (To denote changed emphasis, the title was altered in 1970
to Civil Operations and Rural Development Support.)

CORDS was unique in that for the first time in the history of the United States,
civilians in a wartime field organization commanded military personnel and resources.
Its chief, a civilian with ambassadorial rank, became a deputy commander in
the controlling military headquarters, serving not as a political adviser and
coordinator but as a director, manager, and, in effect, a component commander.

CORDS embraced all American agencies in South Vietnam dealing with pacification
and civilian field operations with the exception of covert operations conducted
by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It was an element of the American
military headquarters-the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(MACV)--and was thus under the military commander, General William C. Westmoreland
and later General Creighton W. Abrams. Yet in practice, with encouragement from
the military commander, CORDS operated as a. quasi­independent corporation
with direct channels of communication and command to its units in the field.
Through the real and perceived personal interest of President Johnson and aggressive
leadership combined with a degree of cooperation and tolerance that was remarkable
among disparate American foreign policy agencies, the civilians in CORDS

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managed to preserve their civilian identity and to exercise firm control of
the program in support of pacification.

The cooperation and tolerance were all the more remarkable after many years
of disharmony and uncertainty over how to organize the program. Although the
American ambassador in Saigon was charged with overall responsibility for all
activities of the US mission, he had to deal with a military commander who was
a de facto equal and with officials of three semi-independent civilian agencies:
the Agency for International Development (AID), the United States Information
Agency, and the CIA. All three agencies maintained staffs in South Vietnam substantially
larger than that of the ambassador, and persons under the Department of Defense
far outnumbered them all.

The US mission was not fully unified. Each agency had its channels of communications
to its parent organization in Washington, its own ideas of how the war should
be conducted, and statutory authority and responsibilities set down by Congress.
The status of the parent organizations in Washington magnified this situation;
no one agency, task force, or individual short of the president himself controlled
American policy and operations in South Vietnam. The program in support of pacification
typified the disunity. In terms of responsibilities, pacification crossed more
agency lines than any other program. Yet no agency saw pacification as its central
responsibility, and none was willing to let any other take full responsibility
for the entire program.

This study is an account of how President Johnson reached the decision that
brought unity to American support of pacification and how he carried it out.
As such, it is a study in organization and management, decisions and implementation,
not a judgment of the success or failure of CORDS in helping the South Vietnamese
government pacify the countryside. Nor is it a study of pacification as a whole;
despite a pervasive and often extremely influential American advisory effort,
pacification remained a responsibility of the South Vietnamese.

I am grateful to the many participants who helped me through interviews or
by granting access to personal and official papers, such as Ambassador William
E. Colby, Mr. Charles M. Cooke, Jr., Maj. Paul Miles, Brig. Gen. Robert M. Montague,
Jr., and General William C. Westmoreland. I would like to give particular thanks
to Ambassador Robert W. Komer whose knowledge, interest, and patience were invaluable.

I am also grateful to members of the US Army's Center of Military History,
who supported and assisted research and publication : Brig.

Illustrations are from Department of Defense files except the
photographs on pages 21 and 52 which are from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library,
National Archives and Records Service; on pages 8, 18, and 50 from the Department
of State; and on page 81 from the Central Intelligence Agency.
:L. South Vietnam.